X-bit labs

19" LCD Monitors Roundup. Part IX. (page 6)

Category: Other

by Aleksey Meyev

[ 02/20/2008 | 10:39 AM ]

The monitor’s default brightness and contrast are 90% and 80%, respectively. I reduced them both to 66% to achieve a 100nit brightness of white. If the contrast setting is set at 35% or lower, darkest halftones merge into black. Light halftones are distinguishable at any settings. Color gradients are reproduced without banding, but the image is somewhat trembling in the area of darks, perhaps due to incorrect emulation of 24-bit color on an 18-bit matrix. The brightness is PWM-regulated at a frequency of 340Hz.

The brightness uniformity is 4.2% on average and 11.4% at the maximum for white. That’s a very good result. For black, the average is 8.1% and the maximum is 23.5% and you can easily see bright bands along the top and bottom of the screen in darkness.

At the default settings the gamma curves go close to each other and have a normal shape but the gamma value is too low, resulting in a faded image on the screen.

The curves almost coincide with each other at the 100nit settings but still go higher than the theoretical curve.

Each of the available color temperature modes is far from ideal. The difference between the temperatures of grays amounts to 1000K and higher.

The monitor has a standard color gamut.

This is an RTC-less matrix you can’t expect a high speed from. The MB19SE is sluggish even in comparison with other RTC-less models: an average response time of 16 milliseconds GtG with a maximum of 33.2 milliseconds.

The brightness and contrast ratio are not high, yet acceptable for a majority of applications. The contrast ratio is low at the 100nit settings due to the high brightness of black.

The ASUS MB19SE is a typical representative of the office class. The only good things about it are the low price and the modest, yet nice, appearance. Well, people don’t usually ask for anything more from this type of monitors.

Highs:

• Inexpensive

Lows:

• Slow matrix
• Imperfect onscreen menu
• Sloppy color reproduction setup
• No digital input
• Low brightness uniformity on black

Recommended usage:

• Text-based applications (documents, spreadsheets, Internet)